Illegals protesting enforcement, Chicago 2006: Their children are Americans?

What appears to be a concerted effort by Establishment Republicans to bully GOP Presidential nominee-apparent Mitt Romney into choosing, on (probably fallacious) Hispandering grounds, Florida Senator Marco Rubio as his Vice Presidential running mate is culminating in a new (deeply flawed) DREAM Act proposal. This is apparently planned to showcase Rubio.

But instead, it may give immigration patriots a magnificent opportunity. The Hill reports:

Rubio’s bill could give a small group of conservative colleagues a chance to force a vote on ending birthright citizenship.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) has sponsored the Birthright Citizenship Act, which would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to consider a person born in the U.S. a citizen only if his or her parent is a U.S. citizen, a lawful permanent resident or an alien serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Briefly current citizenship law stems from the 14th Amendment, which was passed in 1868 to prevent the South from denying the vote to newly freed slaves. Famously it said

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. [emphasis added]

As the rules are now operated, the emphasized phrase is ignored. But Congress did put it in. Why?

Because the Radical Republicans, eager though they were to take over Southern states with Black votes, were not at all willing to risk their own political bases in the West to enfranchised American Indians (absurd to call them “Native Americans” in this context). These were deemed to be primarily citizens of their tribe—and excluded from voting until the Snyder Act was passed in 1924.

On this view, children of economic migrants still culturally and emotionally part of another country should not automatically be citizens.

As a matter of fact, there were no immigration laws in 1868. It was only after a very dubiously reasoned Supreme Court case a generation later that the children of legally resident aliens were granted citizenship. The matter of the children of illegals has never been directly litigated.

And as a practical matter, almost all counties which had statute citizenship law similar to the US operating reality have abolished it in recent years. In this age of unprecedentedly cheap travel, the risks to the integrity of the nation (to say nothing of the fiscal stability of its welfare system) are just too great.

The reason the Vitter idea is so inspired, though, is not that Birthright Citizenship reform would be so advantageous. It is because of the example of the fantastic political firestorm about the issue that swept in on Washington in the summer of 2010. The VDARE.com Birthright Citizenship archive for the year is here, the Anchor Baby 2010 archive is here.

Exactly why this conflagration started is not clear, although Senator Lindsey Graham was blamed. What was exceptionally impressive (speaking as a veteran of the Immigration Wars) was the ferocity generated. It turned out large numbers of the public understood the issue (in part, we believe, because of VDARE.com) and were incensed. The comment threads of newspapers were a pleasure to read. By the end of the summer the GOP Leadership was fully employed pretending to be on board. (Of course in the 112th Congress they have done nothing).

Sadly, the Big Feet of the Immigration restraint institutions, FAIR and CIS, and to a less pronounced degree NumbersUSA, were MIA. The optimistic explanation is that, concentrated as they are on Inside-the-Beltway maneuvering, they saw that this was a life-or-death issue on which maximum resistance from the Treason Lobby in Congress was to be expected. Raising Birthright Citizenship was not conducive to a quiet life.

VDARE.com, by contrast, believes that the only way to Patriotic Immigration Reform is through rebellion in the Heartland—as the Bush Amnesty battles showed. And the birthright citizenship issue works. The current absurd situation invariably infuriates ordinary Americans when they come to understand how anomalous it is. The Birth Tourism scandal is particularly incendiary.

But it also has to be said that abolition of the Anchor Baby loophole is practical politics. It would remove the political (as distinct from the social and economic) drawback from the “guest worker” programs so beloved of the Cheap Labor Lobby. Perhaps they could be detached from their traitorous allies. I believe David Frum has seen this.

The fact that this birthright citizenship olive branch has not been extended in exchange for a guest worker program suggests to me that other forces are responsible for the betrayal perpetrated by the GOP leadership in the current Congress.

So VDARE.com applauds the Vitter initiative. The Treason Lobby will be outraged—and frightened.

And Patriots will be able to judge conclusively where the loyalties of the Republican leadership lie.